 "After China and Canada, Mexico announces retaliatory tariffs on US")
Mexico on Tuesday announced retaliatory tariffs in response to US President Donald Trump’s 25 per cent levy on Mexican goods.
The country’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said that she would introduce the US products Mexico will target with tariffs on Sunday in a public event in Mexico City’s central plaza. Unlike China and Canada, Mexico decided to wait until Sunday, though the country has said since January that it had a plan ready for precisely this scenario.
Sheinbaum said Tuesday that there is no reason for penalties on some of the largest trading partners for the US.
“There is no motive or reason, nor justification that supports this decision that will affect our people and our nations,” she added.
Meanwhile, Ottawa has said that it will slap tariffs on American goods worth $100 billion over 21 days.
The Trump-imposed tariffs that he declared in January came into effect on March 4, inviting retaliatory measures from countries that have been left affected by them. Starting just past midnight, imports from Canada and Mexico are now to be taxed at 25 per cent, with Canadian energy products subject to 10 per cent import duties.
‘Offensive, defamatory’
Sheinbaum blasted the Trump administration for going ahead with the sweeping tariff measures that are set to hit Mexico’s economy.
Calling the tariffs “offensive and defamatory”, the Mexican president listed the achievements of her young administration against Mexico’s powerful drug cartels, including seizing more than a ton of fentanyl and dismantling 329 methamphetamine labs.
Impact Shorts
More Shorts“We collaborate to avoid illegal drug trafficking to the United States, but as we have said on multiple occasions, that country’s government must take responsibility too for the crisis of opioid consumption that has caused so many deaths in the United States,” Sheinbaum said.
Mexico’s president added that the tariffs Mexico will respond with are “not in any way or with the purpose of starting an economic or commercial confrontation that unfortunately and regrettably is the opposite of what we must be doing.”
With inputs from agencies
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